Seriously. All you people on left and right, suspend your disbelief for one minute. Seriously.

What if Barack Obama was right and S&P just got it wrong.

Heres what Im hearing and it gives credence to this theory.

S&P, Im told, began telling some of its clients about the downgrade on Friday morning. Thats why the market was so screwed up on Friday.

By Friday afternoon, the Treasury Department told S&P it had made a $2 trillion math mistake.

But S&P had already told its clients about the downgrade. So it couldnt walk it back now without a major loss of confidence in its credibility. Could you imagine that conversation? Hey . . . um . . . Joe. Yeah, Charlie here from S&P. So . . .um . . . we made a $2 trillion math mistake in our downgrade analysis. . . . Whats that? You just lost $500 million in the market because of it? Oh . . . um . . . sorry Joe. Better luck next time.

So it had to come up with a different reason.

Its reason? Acrimony in Washington  in other words, nothing to do with the U.S.A.s ability to pay its debts or financial issues, just typical Washington politics. And it couched its statement in such a way that the tea party movement could say, see, see, we told you Washington needed more cuts, and the left could say, see, see, we told you we needed tax increases.

Acrimony in Washington is nothing new. Despite a lot of rhetoric about compromise this past week, it is a feature, not a bug, of the American system of government. And major debt and growing deficits are nothing new. And they are bipartisan, pre-existing, long term, and long existing problems.

Now, to put my partisan hat back on  if the White House is right and this is what happened, why the hell is David Axelrod out blaming the Tea Party Movement, a movement that at best has the support of a few dozen members of the United States House of Representatives and has only seen those members in office for six months?

Thats as irresponsible as S&P, and it also does not compute if S&P is the one that screwed up.

Given we create our own money to prop up the stock market, what is the basis for claiming the US wont be able to pay it’s debts, some of which is to the Federal Reserve? I am sure S+P doesnt have a clue.

They said that it would require cuts of $4 trillion to maintain the credit rating. The $2 trillion “mistake” is the government’s: counting a promise to reduce the rate of increase sometime during someone elses term as real cuts.

Let's take the story as a given that S&P screwed up, and they're two trillion off. At a present spending rate, they're just 15 months off. So they're just slightly ahead of the curve and will look like geniuses when the other services make the same computations, just before the fall elections.

Why is Axelrod blaming the tea party? Because that was the plan when this October surprise landed and the S&P downgraded US debt. Because if you shift us over just a bit, like 15 months, we're right before the November elections. And the last defense of this White House as ALWAYS been to blame someone else for their mess. It's Bush's fault, it's the Tea Party's fault, it's martians who did it...

I sure hope that Obama is making sure his people know the birthdays of every senior analyst at S&P and buying them really really nice birthday presents (like a DVD collection from Europe?) for this very generous gift. Because the downgrade’s not happening right before the November elections, it's happening well over a year before, and gosh, no where near when people are heading to the ballot boxes.

What a present the S&P gave Obama by spilling the beans a little early.

13
posted on 08/09/2011 9:48:51 PM PDT
by kingu
(Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)

The two trillion dollar 'error' was the White House's Infra-Rose colored glasses view of how much money his Keynsen Economic Plan is going to provide the American coffers.

In other words, there is no 'two trillion dollars'. It's a projection, based off of rainbow-and-sunshine flavored unicorn flatulence from the White House. That money doesn't exist, and it's money that we have no reason to believe will exist. It's a lie. They can pout and whine and demand we believe them, but they can't produce any numbers to prove it.

It's fantasy math. It's like arguing with your bank that you're really a billionaire, but they lose your last deposit of 1 billion dollars and they're the ones being unfair for not changing their accounting practices. You can wave your crayon scribbled napkin and call it a deposit slip, but no one will believe you.

16
posted on 08/09/2011 9:49:16 PM PDT
by Steel Wolf
("Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master." - Gaius Sallustius Crispus)

Ask yourself...do we deserve to be downgraded, given our current condition & no plan to fix it? Common sense is so uncommon these days that folks never stop to see what’s obviously right before their very eyes.

I still can’t believe the stock market has done as well as it has. The only reason I can find is the excess liquidity pushed into the market by the Fed/Treasury. It surely can’t be business taking loans and spending money!

Despite the economic measurables pointing to stocks being a good buy the fact remains that the entire foundation of our nation and country is wobbling badly. All this rating agency did was point out the obvious.... nothing is changing. Bush (yes, he did) spent too much. Obama has spent twice as much as Bush. A good start would have been for Congress to push spending back to past numbers before the hyperspending by the government.

They could not do it. The debt crisis and deal proved it.

18
posted on 08/09/2011 9:52:05 PM PDT
by volunbeer
(Keep the dope, we'll make the change in 2012!)

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